Motley Crue to release single on Rock Band game

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Nikki Sixx of the group "Motley Crue" poses at the premiere of the film 'Yellow" in Los Angeles, California June 19, 2007. REUTERS/Fred Prouser

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - In a nod to the ascendancy of video games, rock ‘n’ roll bad boys Motley Crue will become the first group to release a new single through Rock Band, the developer of the wildly popular game said on Monday.

“Saints of Los Angeles,” the first single from the group’s upcoming album, will be available for download for 99 cents on Tuesday via Microsoft Corp’s Xbox Live Marketplace and on Thursday via Sony Corp’s PlayStation store, said Viacom Inc’s MTV Games.

In “Rock Band,” gamers play along to songs with controllers shaped like a guitar, drum set, or microphone. The game is sold for about $170 for consoles such as Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It competes with the similarly popular “Guitar Hero” series, made by Activision Inc.

Their success has underscored the potential of video games as a new source of revenue for a music industry grappling with falling CD sales.

“Rock Band” went on sale last November and now has more than 80 tracks available for download in addition to the 58 tracks in the original game. MTV Games said players have bought more than 6 million downloadable songs for Rock Band. Tunes range from classics by the likes of the Who and the Rolling Stones to more-contemporary fare from the Killers and Fall Out Boy.

Details of Motley Crue’s album are expected to be announced during a news conference in Hollywood on Tuesday.

The hard-living metal band, which rose to prominence during the glam-metal era in the late-1980s, is famed for such tunes as “Dr. Feelgood” and “Shout at the Devil.”